Tuesday 22 November 2011

Ted and his bar shoes

Ted is a quarter horse who arrived on Saturday - in a nice piece of synchronicity he was brought down by Nicky's owners (she is another quarter horse) who took her home on Sunday.
 As you can see, he was shod in remedial shoes with gel filler and a wedge and he had also been on 5 weeks of box rest. Ted was diagnosed on MRI with bilateral DDFT damage, worse on his LF, and he has undergone surgical treatment as well as the farriery.   
He is on a fairly strict regime of limited exercise, as horses often are when they first arrive, but he is allowed out on the tracks and to mix with the other horses which he seems to enjoy.  With the rest of the horses being very relaxed there is no great incentive for him to dash about and I hope he can now (literally!) start finding his feet.
Ted has an underrun heel and the focus out of shoes will be to improve that, and the whole caudal hoof.  I suspect (as you can see from this photo) he also has some issues with medio-lateral balance but it will be easier to assess that when I have photos of him out of his shoes...

2 comments:

jenj said...

Eeee, a quarter horse! Not that I'm partial to them or anything... Poor fellow sounds like he's been through a lot, though. Here's hoping that he'll be well on his way to a new set of happy, comfortable feet in no time!

Does he go by Teddy when he's being especially cute?

cptrayes said...

Friend of mine's has just been operated on in one foot for ddft fraying. I'd be very interested in your views as to whether operating is actually necessary or whether it would have come right with a barefoot rehab??

She's a complete traditionalist, as is the vet. I did not even suggest it, I would have been wasting my breath.

C